The Fable of Free Milk
by abc79-de
Summary: Lit. Sequel to Coming Out of the Closet. They have another conversation about the state of their growing relationship. They only get a little distracted. One-shot, rated M. Complete.


The Fable of Free Milk

Lit. Sequel to Coming Out of the Closet. They have another conversation about the state of their growing relationship. They only get a little distracted. One-shot, rated M.

He was covered in a layer of grime; in several areas dirt was smudged and smeared from errant swipes of his hand across his brow or where he'd scratched at his cheek. It was hot outside, and even with the air conditioning running to its max capacity, all the labor he was performing in a cramped space led to overheating. Her apartment was fairly clean in well-lived areas, but the small closet that housed her water heater and ironically an inherited Swiffer from a prior occupant was a very dusty and rarely frequented space. The minute he'd started assessing the problem she'd been ill equipped to fix herself, he'd started shedding layers of clothes and displacing dirt.

He briefly wondered if the reason for his vigilant audience was his steady rate of discarding his clothing. Truth be told, he didn't care what the reason was. She was one of the few people he never minded having in his personal space, which she called his bubble. He was happy to make her feel useful, in case she got ideas about leaving him to do the work alone. "Can you hand me a wrench?"

Rory dug into his toolbox, which he had smartly brought with him on the hypothesis that she did not own the tools he'd require, if any at all. In an instant she was leaned in close, adding to his body heat in a way he welcomed, despite all other factors. He could be lit on fire happily if it involved her skin sliding against his. "This one?"

Jess took the tool from her hands and smiled at her rare display of uncertainty. This woman was Ivy League-schooled, well-respected in her ranks of journalism, and overall very well educated. He gave her a little smirk. "Didn't you build houses to pad your college applications?"

Her response held no irony. "I worked mainly with hammers."

"Of course. What was I thinking?" he asked, taking the wrench and twisting a fitting.

She leaned forward to peer around at what he was doing with the tool. "How bad is it?"

He let out a sigh, giving a final twist as he eyed the repair. "It's not great."

She bit her lip, he could tell by her pause. "Did you fix it?"

He turned his head to look at her, feigning the pangs of insult, but he gave it to her straight. Even with his ability to fix most mechanical objects, her water heater was on its last legs. "For now."

She sat back on her heels in relief, letting him work in silence for a few minutes. He didn't like chit chat, which she found utterly refreshing. She spent a large part of her day communicating with people and with him she could just be. Silences with him were amiable, relaxed, happy even, and were never in shortage of comfort or contact. They often curled up together, bodies intertwined, reading or listening to music or watching favorite movies. Words weren't always necessary, a belief held by both.

Of course, this togetherness was only accomplished when she wasn't on assignment and they were both free to meet up in the same city. She lived in the tiny little New York walk-up with the recently broken water heater, while he still resided in Philadelphia, working downstairs at a small publisher with ever-increasing responsibilities and crashing upstairs with his fellow co-workers. For most couples it might grow to be a point of contention, but so far they'd continued on without mention of changing their arrangement. They'd matured to the point of not wanting to change something that was mostly working in that the good more than compensated for the less desirable aspects. They were happier than they'd ever been before, and knew it wasn't something to take for granted.

"How is it possible you didn't realize this thing was leaking?" he asked, as he shifted slightly in the remnants of the small flood that she'd managed to clean up before he got there. His torso had been twisted and his arms snaked around awkwardly to reach the connection to the wall. He was glad to shift slightly to finish the job. She'd leaned back against the wall, watching him.

She scratched at her forearm momentarily. "I just got back yesterday. I didn't have time to come home right away—I went straight from the airport to the office, then when I finally did trudge back here last night with my luggage, it was late and I was beyond exhausted. It wasn't until I woke up this morning and shorted out the coffee maker that I came back to look at the breaker box and found, well, the flood."

"Did you call your super?" He already guessed she hadn't, given the way she'd gone on, ranting and slightly freaked out, when she called him before he caught the train to the city. He gave her calm instructions to sop up the mess with towels after shutting off the water for the appliance, and to be safe to cut the power as well to the breaker box. He didn't like their close proximity when everything was working, but when both were malfunctioning his concern for her safety was paramount.

She shook her head. "I knew you were coming up. I figured I'd see what you knew before I tried to nail him down. He's in Florida most of the year, and his nephew fills in when he's gone. I don't like calling him, because he checks out the ladies and always asks me what I'm doing that night. He's invited me to a very skeezy bar on a number of occasions now."

He gave a snort so hard that it hurt deep in his chest. "The ladies?"

She kicked at his leg, which was stuck straight out in the hallway in front of her. "Shut it."

He wasn't about to do that. He had too much fun getting her riled up. But he did ease off the teasing. He had a much bigger line item to cover. "Can I make a suggestion?"

She sat up a little straighter, growing more concerned. "Do I need an electrician for the breaker box?"

Jess leaned his head back, meeting the wall. He put his arms down to rest them from the angle he'd been holding them up at to reach the connection to the wall. "Probably, but that wasn't what I was going to say."

"What were you going to suggest?"

He leaned over to show his face from the side of the tank that had been the source of her flood. "Move."

She pulled her feet up and started to ease away from him. "Am I in your way?"

He grabbed her ankle and yanked softly to encourage her to sit back down. "No, I mean get another apartment. This place is far from well-kept, things keep breaking, not that you're here to deal with problems when they arise."

She blew out a breath in an upward manner, ruffling her long, partially side-swept bangs. "I can't really afford a better place, though."

"You could if you lived with someone else," he said, his words not at all pointed. He skimmed his eyes over her face to see her first visceral reaction to such a suggestion.

It wasn't surprising she cringed. "A roommate? I'm not sure. My track record there hasn't been stellar. I told you about the time Paris moved all my stuff into the hallway at the doo-wop apartment, didn't I?"

He drew in a breath. That was when she'd moved in with her blonde jerk of a boyfriend at the time that he hated with the fire of a thousand suns. Which is impressive, because he was pretty sure he would never hate anyone more than her first boyfriend, Dean. "You told me."

"I know this place sucks, but it has to be better than living with someone like Paris."

"What if you lived with someone less psychotic, or at least better medicated, than Paris? Wouldn't it be nice to have someone who would pick you up at the airport or make sure you didn't come home to a flood? Maybe someone that made sure there was fresh food in your fridge on a regular basis?"

She blinked at him. Not one to miss an opportunity, she took the chance to admire the outline of his body visible through his thin undershirt. His closet was lousy with them, in different shades of solid, dark neutrals. Each one was just as deliciously clingy as the next, allowing a lovely showcase of his hard-earned muscles, from firm biceps to well-framed shoulders to his washboard-worthy abs. Maybe she should have been embarrassed to be caught in a total state of distraction due to his body, but it was a rather frequent occurrence in his presence. They'd gotten back together via a series of random hookups that became less random as time passed. "Um, yeah, but who would do that without payment being required on my part?"

He gave a one-shoulder shrug, and his tee shirt rode up a little on the opposite side. "I would."

"If you didn't live in Philly, you'd be the ideal choice."

She was serious, not bothering to question his humor. She was used to him—his rhythms, his humor, his energy levels. She had learned to trust him, and she was secure in what they meant to one another. It became clear to him in that moment that he was going to have to be far from subtle on this point.

"What if … I moved to New York?"

Now her interest was renewed, if a little contained. "But you work in Philadelphia."

He made another non-committal noise. "But the majority of the stuff I do, I could do it anywhere."

"You'd do that? I thought you were tired of New York, that's why you moved to Philadelphia to begin with."

"I was. I also didn't have a reason to stay here back then."

"You'd still have to do some business in Philly," she said, starting to reason through his offer in her head. It was one of her steps. Any major decision had to make it through all her levels of mental filters.

"And I'll always have a place to crash there. I could make an effort to keep those trips to when you're gone, and probably down to two or three days at a time, easy."

She was astonished at the straightforward plan he laid out. "That easy?"

"It's just an idea," he tossed out the escape clause.

"But it's something you'd consider?" she asked. He wasn't sure if she was dumbfounded, touched, or a combination of the two. "For me?"

"Well, it's not just for you. It would keep me from having to spend my evenings with you fixing all your broken shit," he reasoned.

She kicked at him again. "If we lived together, all my broken stuff would be your broken stuff."

He waggled a finger at her. "I'm not living here. We'd get new stuff. Unbroken stuff."

Her eyes widened at the thought. "I never really thought that you'd want to do that. Be domestic and cohabitate."

His nose wrinkled in response. "Domestic?"

"Not like, domestic, domestic. I am not envisioning me in an apron and you smoking a pipe after dinner or anything."

"What are you picturing?"

"You mean if you and I were to live together?"

He nodded, like a single syllable. "Yeah."

She smiled, just a little, as she let her mind wander through that landscape. It had entered her mind before, of course it had. Any time they had to squeeze in a late night or an early morning to accommodate their time together. Every morning she'd spent lying in bed after he'd left to catch a train, wishing he was still there to curl around under the sheets or share breakfast with before she went into work. However facts were facts and the facts were that he lived and worked in Philadelphia and she did not. So she happily took each encounter for what it was. "We'd need so many bookcases."

He crooked an eyebrow at her. "This is your main concern about living together?"

She tossed her hands up. "I don't know. The only other time I lived with a guy it was because everything I owned was unceremoniously transferred to a stairwell. Living in someone else's apartment was kind of weird, even with my things scattered around it."

"You wouldn't be moving into my place, though. We'd be getting a place together."

"We'd be house hunting," she said slowly, the little crevice between her eyebrows growing more prominent.

"We'd have to. This isn't the right place for all our books. Too much chance of water damage," he pointed out.

"What would it look like, in your mind?" she asked, her curiosity overriding all else, possibly even logic.

"We'd spend less time on the train. We could have dinner together most nights. Breakfast. I could meet you in the city for lunch on occasion. We could make more plans. Hang out in the park. Find the best Thai delivery in our neighborhood," he added with a smirk, ever contesting their favorite takeaway food cuisine. "We could even take advantage of the New York music scene. Punk is still alive and well. It's not just a rumor."

"That sounds like you've given this thought."

"I've had thoughts. I don't like leaving you all warm in bed to get on a cold train. I can work pretty much from anywhere, but you're here, you know?"

"I know, it's just, I thought we had the sort of set-up that most guys dreamed of. You're here when you want and I'm there when I can be, and the rest of the time it's our own time. I mean, what's that old saying about getting milk for free?"

"Not sure how livestock enters into this, but I know that I'm not here when I want to be. I'm here when I can manage to be on the contingency that you're also around. Forget what most people want. We should do what makes sense for us. What we're doing, I'm not sure it makes sense anymore. Not if we both want more."

She leaned over to press into the side of his body, not minding for one second the dirt or sweat or grease. "Living together would be more. If you're sure it will work for both of us."

"I think we should look at options. See a couple of places. What do you say?"

He could see that she was onboard, from the tentative smile playing on her lips to the glint in her aqua eyes. "And you're sure this isn't about my making you fix my busted apartment instead of having sex?"

"We're still going to have sex," he assured her, nuzzling in the side of her neck, under her hair. She always smelled like she'd been hanging out in a coffee shop, and her skin tasted sweet and salty to him at the same time. It was something he craved, he missed, he wanted to experience as much as he could. It was different than smoking was—he only really wanted a cigarette when he was under extreme stress, for the calming effects of the nicotine. He wanted her all the time, and she did the opposite of calming him, and he could never get enough.

Her fingers worked at the hem of his shirt, her nails grazing the taut skin of his stomach. He eased the rest of the way out of the tiny closet he'd been working in and crawled over her on the hallway floor, ducking his head so she could more easily shift off his shirt. His mouth was on hers not a second later, his tongue sweeping over her lips to part them in a needful rush. He sank into her as she settled onto her back, his weight a welcome counterbalance to her as she wrapped one leg around the back of his knee to anchor herself further. It summed up their need for one another in one simple snapshot—there was never anywhere too uncomfortable, too incompatible for them to satisfy their need for one another. In the moment, there was nothing else, but him and her.

He knew he was on his game when she arched her back and made a noise in her throat that was one of the sexiest sounds he'd ever heard. He enjoyed making her a little crazy, knowing full well that turnabout was fair play. He didn't opt to open the fasten of her pants, which would expedite the process, but rather he slid his hand down the waistband that was already slung lower at her hips and used his fingers to stroke her in the confined space between the fabric and her skin. He only paused when she spoke, a mix of breathy syllables and desire forming his name.

"You good here?" he asked, his own voice having lowered in octave. He was barely able to form full thoughts as he stroked over her. "We could," he offered halfheartedly, knowing she didn't need him to form full sentences to get his point across. She was keenly attuned to him and his every touch.

"Just… don't stop," she managed, wanting only one thing. She knew he'd give it to her, he was always so singularly focused on her. Each breath came harder, each press of his mouth against her skin grew more insistent, and she knew—she knew—that he was building up to something earthshattering. Each second narrowed her whole world, wrapped up in him, letting his body fuel hers.

She bit her lip to keep herself from reacting too quickly. His fingers were dexterous, his thumb brushing circles with just enough pressure to make her mewl, while his fingers slipped back and dipped inside her, making the edges of her thoughts fuzzy and her body vibrate. She wanted to rip her pants open to give him full access. She wanted to push him back and ease herself on top of him. She bit her lip harder and gave in to his prerogative, for a little while longer.

She gave one more cry, trembling and yearning, and he relented. His hand slid up her stomach, leaving a void of damp heat where his hand had been, and he pressed his forehead to the exposed skin above her waistband, giving himself a half breath of concentration. He knew he could move them to her bed. It wasn't far, but he was surrounded by the smell of her, against his cheek and on his hand, and he made his decision with all haste. He made quick work of her clothes as only he could, stripping her bare and earning the full focus on her blue-rimmed stare on him. It caught his breath, the sight of her all bared and waiting for him. He wanted her, every last part of her—her long legs wrapped around him, her soft, alabaster skin pressed against his, stray strands of her long chestnut hair caught in his mouth. There was no doubt, given the way she was looking at him that she wanted him just as much. It had taken him a long time and a lot of maturity to come to realize that no matter what she deserved, he was capable of giving her what she wanted. At the moment, she wanted him to lose his pants.

He'd set about fulfilling her wish, but she was done letting him have all the fun. She sat up to push his hands away, taking over the duty. She traced gently above where his pants rode on his hips, making him shiver slightly. Her touch was so light, but he knew she was capable of bruising him when she dug her fingers into his skin in the throes. Another thrill went through him at the thought that they'd be able to share these kinds of interludes on a much more regular basis if their getting a place together worked out.

She ended up on her knees to mirror his stance after she released his fly to gain initial access to the contents. He ran a hand over her cheek, skimming her neck and shoulder, following all the way through down her arm. She smiled at both the familiarity of his touch and the awe with which he seemed to still hold when he caressed her like that.

"Hey," she said, nudging him in the cheek with her nose. Her lips skimmed his, a soft brush dragging just hard enough to get him to turn his head toward her. His brown eyes locked on hers, all blue curiosity. "We can go in the other room," she offered, though it didn't seem like much of a request on her part.

He settled his hands on her hips as he sat back, lining her up over him. His pants were open and parted, but still on. He lowered her down on his lap, the rougher hand of the denim creating a different sensation as she ground against the strained hardness of him under the stiff fabric. He always thought of himself as rough, a stark contrast to how soft she was. Her skin was impossibly smooth, unmarred alabaster that he loved to run his hands over. His hands were calloused and paper-cut, from constant use of things far less delicate in handling than her. But she kissed them, cradling them in her own hands like something precious, always something she'd gone too long without. Honestly, he never cared if anything she ever did made sense to him, as long as she looked at him like she did—like he belonged to her.

She opened her mouth, as if to speak, but he ducked down just far enough to lower his mouth to her chest. Her fingers twisted into his unruly dark hair the moment his lips closed around one breast, and her thighs tightened around his hips. He'd walk to and from Philly every day just to be able to feel her clamped around him like that on a daily basis.

Eventually, his pants did come off. Her cries grew louder, more frequent, and were joined by his. Finally, momentarily spent, they lay half propped up against her hallway, her head on his chest and his arm around her shoulders. Both their hair was damp, but from sweat instead of busted pipes or her temperamental water heater. Part of her leg was half asleep from the way she'd been kneeling on it, and his forearms were stripped of strength from holding up her over him for an extended portion of time.

Neither of them had a single complaint, despite any discomfort. She simply planted a soft kiss on his chest. "So when would you be free to look at places?"

He buried his face in her hair, smiling into it as he inhaled her in again. "You sure?"

She didn't need to answer him—her bright eyes and firm smile did that when she tipped her chin up toward him. "To quote a young hoodlum I once knew, as a heart attack."

He pressed his lips to her temple, which was glowing with the sheen of exertion and contentment. "I have some time Thursday. We could probably see a few places before you leave next weekend."

Now it was her turn for a reality check. "You're sure you want to do this?"

"I'm sure about us. And the rest of it, it'll work itself out."

She poked him a little, in his ribs. "Listen to you, all optimistic. If I didn't know better, I'd think you'd gone soft."

He squeezed his hand around her knee, almost tickling her. "Hey, I never said it would end well. There's always bad neighbors, natural disasters, and other uncategorized acts of God."

She escaped his grip and stood up, surveying the mess from both his handiwork and their discarded clothing. "I'm taking a shower. I do have hot water now, right?"

He made it to his feet, on her heels. "I better come with you, to keep you warm just in case."

She smiled as he closed the distance between them and her only concern at that moment was if they'd make it to the bathroom before they got waylaid again.


End file.
